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"Nanny Nuisance"

Housewives in Westchester and other wealthy suburbs are in a tizzy because their housekeepers and nannies are about to lose their driver's licenses. Letters recently went out from the Department of Motor Vehicles in a crackdown on illegal aliens who are using bogus Social Security numbers. "It's a nightmare," complained one disgruntled housefrau. "What good is it having a servant if she can't do the shopping, or pick up the kids at school?" Thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America may lose their jobs once the DMV strips them of their license to drive. "I can't allow the family car to be driven by an unlicensed driver," one homemaker explained. "I'll just have to hire someone else..."

[The AILA rep tugged at our heart strings with tales about a] working mother in Westchester County, [who] is frantic because her devoted Uruguayan babysitter, who has lived in New York since she was 12, will lose her license for lack of a Social Security number or valid visa; an elderly woman is going to lose the immigrant home health care aide who drives her to her doctor... [Assemblyman Barry Grodenchik] said he had met with Korean greengrocers and florists whose businesses are heavily dependent on immigrant truck drivers now losing their licenses.

Comments

Attempting to solve the rich women's help crisis, which started in 1941, doesn't seem like a valid national priority. Self-righteous exploitativeness as an object of public sympathy, is something new perhaps. The compulsively exploitative are now to be regarded as victims in need of our compassion, with extra doses of third-world immigration as therapy?